AT&T Announces iPhone Tethering and New Smartphone Data Plans

[xraydoc]

I will use this opportunity to say "F-ck off, AT&T."
The reliability of my iPhone goes down day by day. And it's not just me, it's all 5 of the iPhones in my family (me, wife, 3 kids). I already have a Verizon phone that I keep with me because the iPhone as become too unreliable for me while at work, but perhaps I'll just leave the iPhone at home full-time from now on.

If they want to "improve" their network by limiting the amount it gets used, I'll help out even more by not using it at all. I'll take my business elsewhere. I know AT&T wont give a crap about losing me (us) as a customer, but I'll be happier for it. It's a shame, too, because I really love my iPhone. It's a big hassle to sync things between my MobileMe-based Macs & iPad and a Google-based device like a Droid and do it smoothly.

Maybe just to spite them I'll buy everyone expensive Motorola Droid Shadows (coming in a couple weeks) or HTC Incredibles.

 

[QCassidy352]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Well, AT&T has been claiming that it will fix it's 3G network, and they did. They just fixed it by putting bandwidth caps on everyone. Don't know what all the complaining is about

Gods I'm glad I left AT&T - It makes me wonder how other carriers are going to respond. With T-Mobile, "unlimited" really does mean unlimited (for now): I've listened to Pandora all day, done uploads/downloads and remote sessions from my Nexus, and had monthly data use anywhere from 1-5GB so far. When Android 2.2 hits my phone, the mobile hotspot is going to allow me to use my laptop over the data network as well. It will be interesting to see if T-Mobile develops similar network problems over time as AT&T did.

But hey, at least on T-Mobile I can actually make calls that connect and stay connected, even if their network isn't as large as AT&Ts.

Problem is, there's no iPhone on t-mo. Android just doesn't do it for some folks, including me. I'm not interested in using google's apps other than gmail (and I'd dump that for mobile me if apple would improve the web client) and maps, and moreover, I just don't care for the os.

AT&T won't get it together until someone else has the iPhone because there are too many people like me who don't think there are good enough alternatives to the iPhone.

 

[Macpad155]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-02/at-t-cuts-some-data-plan-prices-ends-unlimited-offer-update3-.html

AT&T wireless chief Ralph de la Vega has said the carrier is battling congestion in New York and San Francisco as a surge in smartphone use has clogged its network.

Theres the real reason why, like everyone on here has said, its because their network cant handle it.

What i dont get is, and bare with me im a newbie, with ATT making so much money from the iPhone, why is their network so bad?

 

[drummingcraig]

Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure when you buy a new iPhone, you can get the $15 data plan with it and then have AT&T swap it with your current unlimited one.

Yeah I don't know 'bout that one. I read somewhere that one could keep their unlimited plan if they signed a new contract, but I don't know if that applies when buying new equipment. Guess we'll see in a week or so.

 

[rroach3753]

What you really smell is fear on the part of AT&T.

Well, then there's that...lol

 

[Rootus]

But hey, at least on T-Mobile I can actually make calls that connect and stay connected, even if their network isn't as large as AT&Ts.

About half the time I can't even get a T-Mobile signal at my house, and I live in a decent sized suburb (100K people). Even closer to Portland the signal is pretty flaky. Verizon has as good a signal as AT&T but their business practices make AT&T look like angels.

 

[rjohnstone]

What i dont get is, and bare with me im a newbie, with ATT making so much money from the iPhone, why is their network so bad?

They don't actually start "making money" until the subsidy is paid off on the phone.
But they are still dumping billions into network upgrades.
Just taking a lot longer than most people here would like.

 

[Stryx]

I agree with you about the text messages (sort of), but the data plan isn't modeled after the text message plan at all. It appears if you go over you will be charged $10 per gigabyte. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call that a world of hurt. It's not like they're charging 20 cents per kilobyte over or anything.

Look a little closer. That's if you go with the 2gb plan. The 200mb plan is $15 every 200mb over. Not as bad as data without a data plan, but, pretty damn steep. Of course if they can actually give you warnings at a decent time, let you change it without having them try to upsell you on some new feature and have it take effect instantly, I'm okay with that.

Unfortunatly this being AT&T and having seen their misleading commericials, dropped calls, and limited 'fastest' 3g I anticipate you getting a late warning the next day and being able to bump up AFTER they've already charged you the $15 once or twice. This company would NEVER allow a retroactive upgrade.

The 2gb plan isn't 'terrible', but, I'm not going to cheer them for edging up the average cost per megabyte and trying to tell me how awesome they are for saving me $5 a month. Now expand the current roll-over to everything instead of just minutes and I might be okay with this.

 

[mosx]

The OS restricts you from DL'ing things over 20MB on 3G so your argument is invalid.

Wrong. I was using it as an example. So your claim is "invalid".

There are plenty of ways to blow through 200MB or 2GB.

How?

Well, youtube is one way. Netflix is another. Websites have tons of graphical ads these days, thats another. I would say the good majority of bandwidth on most sites goes to ads. Just look at MacRumors. Mostly text with a bunch of graphical ads.

Theres quite a few other ways as well. What if you're using the TomTom app? That pulls data full time. Streaming Last.FM or Pandora? Thats a good 128Kbps right there. That ends up being about 60MB per hour. You could blow through that 200MB cap in a little over 3 hours. You could blow through the 2GB cap in just a couple of days.

People like you and the other AT&T apologists don't realize how many INNOCENT things people do every day on their iPhone that will suddenly see them being hit with huge overage fees.

Driving to work and streaming radio or using navigation to get where you're going is enough to eat up your 2GB cap in days. People don't realize this. Even just checking your "social media" sites can quickly eat it up. Going through a small photo album on Facebook is enough to eat up many many megabytes. Take a picture, upload it to Facebook, see the uploaded result, then check your news feed, browse through your friends new 5 picture album. Hey theres 20MB gone right there.

If you're averaging 1.5Mbps on AT&T's 3G network (I average about 3Mbps), you can blow through your 200MB cap in just 20 minutes if you're using data at full bandwidth.

I'm debating now whether I should keep my iPhone 3G S or not. Thankfully I'm still in the return window, and AT&T's contract says nothing about non-refundable upgrade fees, so I can get that $18 upgrade fee back. Pay for what I used and thats it.

I'd much rather be with a carrier that actually WANTS my business rather than seeing me as a pawn that has no choice other than to use their service and tries to milk me for all I'm worth.

 

[Stryx]

About half the time I can't even get a T-Mobile signal at my house, and I live in a decent sized suburb (100K people). Even closer to Portland the signal is pretty flaky. Verizon has as good a signal as AT&T but their business practices make AT&T look like angels.

Anything in particular? I've got some friends who have Verizon, and hate thier customer service, but they have 3g everywhere, less invisible or dropped calls, better call quality, and better coverage on average about anywhere we go on the East Coast.

 

[QCassidy352]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-02/at-t-cuts-some-data-plan-prices-ends-unlimited-offer-update3-.html

AT&T wireless chief Ralph de la Vega has said the carrier is battling congestion in New York and San Francisco as a surge in smartphone use has clogged its network.

Theres the real reason why, like everyone on here has said, its because their network cant handle it.

What i dont get is, and bare with me im a newbie, with ATT making so much money from the iPhone, why is their network so bad?

They really are investing billions and billions. The problem is, there's only so fast you can go with this kid of infrastructure no matter how much you spend. Also, the rate of data usage has increased well beyond what anyone predicted was possible pre-iPhone.

That said, it's been 3 years now, and those excuses I just made for them are getting tired. It's time to see some damn results, by which I mean consistent data speed > 2 Mbps (1.5? ...1?) in major metropolitan areas.

 

[kdarling]

Texts are not free

Sounds like the law needs to be fixed, then. And NYT needs to do better research...

There is so much ignorance in that article, it's hard to know where to start.

First off, the professor quoted by the article did NOT say he thought that text messages were or should be cost free. What that professor said was that he thought that the cost should not rise with more messages being transferred:

Professor Keshav said that once a carrier invests in the centralized storage equipment — storing a terabyte now costs only $100 and is dropping — and the staff to maintain it, its costs are basically covered. “Operating costs are relatively insensitive to volume,” he said. “It doesn’t cost the carrier much more to transmit a hundred million messages than a million.”

This naive concept, in conjunction with the superficial knowledge that an SMS is piggybacked in a control channel, led the main reporter to conclude that texts had "virtually no cost".

Like most myths, this one falls apart once you look more than skin deep. I'm busy at work right now, so I'm going to make this short:

1) Storage cost is minor, but that's only a tiny piece of the puzzle.

Carriers transmit millions of texts per minute during peak times, requiring store-and-forward, inter-carrier comms, and all the normal call setup costs. That's like handling millions of extra phone pages. This is not done by storage drives alone!

Text services require adding more and more redundant server farms scattered across the entire country in buildings with staffs and emergency power supplies. Not cheap, that.

2) The supposedly "free piggyback" control channel only goes from the tower to the phones. It is not something that carries the message all over the world.

This channel is itself a limited resource and the tower can actually be overwhelmed by too many text messages hitting a single control area. (Pages are sent to all towers in an area, btw, not just one, just in case you moved.)

Moreover, the channel SMS page is nothing compared to what happens when a phone sees it. The phone then has to respond and get authenticated in order to receive the actual message. That's a lot more control signaling back and forth. Then finally the phone must send a receipt acknowledgement.

So the idea that it's "oh gosh just piggybacking" is nonsense if you actually know the full protocol.

Got to run. Later.

 

[Fly Rodder]

Troof

If 2% of users use 2GB or more, why the need to set limits? As Yoda would say, puzzling this is. The dark side of the Force I sense in them.

Because this about forcing people to buy more bandwidth than they need at a higher $/mb.

I'll bet that 90% of their users use 250-400 mb. Therefore they won't go for the expensive 13mb/$ plan and opt for the 80mb/$ plan but still not use more than a couple of hundred mb.

The 2gb plan is just to get suckers to pay for more data than they need and at the same cut off the small percentage of folks that are hitting 3-6gb.

And the tethering charge is ********.

Why has my free market foresaken me?

 

[undrpsi]

Yes, likely you could get a discount on insurance for driving so few miles. Depending on if you commute or not.

You are also depreciating your car much less. So at the end of the first year your car will be worth substantially more than the car with 100,000 miles on it. You are both getting the same car and usage of that car, one of you use just using it more quickly. So, yes, you ARE getting a cheaper car 'rate'. That's why a 15k mile per year lease is more than a 10k lease. If you buy your car you won't realize this because depreciation rates aren't taken into account in that sales model, but you'll realize it when you go to sell it...

No..we aren't talking about the car or insurance (ie phone and insurance) we are talking about the "use" charge. The "use" charge is the same if you drive 1000 miles or 10,000 miles...becuase the "use" charge is for the infrastructure. If we use your reasoning, I should get the iPhone for free (no subsidies) since I don't use a lot of data. I should also have to pay less than $3.95 per phone/month for my accident insurance...and get a discount on my rate...again...since I don't use the full data plan.

Allegory aside...if you purchase an 'unlimited' use contract and then use it as much as you can...how is that making yourself a 'posterboy' for 'screwing everyone else?" Again, ATT entered into a fair use contract, if they didn't know (unlikely) that it was going to cause problems that was an error on THEIR part...but when they, and others, demonize the customer who is using the system eactly as the contract states how is that right? If they had said..."Oops..we need to go up on anyone who is using more than 5 gigs" then fine. This BS of "Most people don't use over 2gigs so that's the where we are setting the bar" is just a justification for a rate increase because of the popularity. Mark my words...it will rub a lot of people the wrong way. It's done it to me and I don't use the max. What about all the people who were planning on the 3g iPad because of the data plan? Do you think Steve is happy after he touted the 'great' contract ATT had agreed to? I called ATT and though it's still not settled they did state the $30 unlimited that is currently available (for another few days) must be continiously used every month or it defaults to the new plan (and no way you can ever go back).

It would be different if ATT wasn't such a pain to deal with. Been with them 10 years and I have hated them from day one. Planning to move to Verizon (who ain't Saints either) anyway...this just makes my decision easier.

 

[branjosef]

So I have a question. I am still on firmware 3.0 and have enabled the tethering functionality on my iphone 3G by installing the benm.at profile. My phone is jailbroken but not unlocked. I only use the tethering option sparingly when no internet connection is available (i.e check my email, news sites, etc.). I don't consider myself a big data user. I just use it and get off. I see it as no harm no foul. My data usage for the last month was around 50mbs.

Since I am using the built in tethering feature on the iphone, would they be able to pick that up and know that I'm tethering. I wasnt sure if I should transition to a third party app through cydia to keep my tethering option available. Eventually when I upgrade my phone, I'll just get tethering added but until I do, I kinda like the feature and would like to keep it if possible. Any thoughts?

 

[ucfgrad93]

I'm actually liking this new plan. There are 2 iPhones on my family plan.

My wife in the past 6 months has not had usage greater than 135 MB.
My daughter in the past 6 months has not had usage greater than 500 MB.

By adjusting the plans accordingly, I can save $20/month or get myself an iPhone and only see an increase of $5/month as a result of the offsetting savings.

 

[undrpsi]

you guys are whiny bunch. this change is definitely fair. if you use more, you pay more!

a friend of mine jailbroke his iphone and tether to it. if ppl like him use significantly more bandwidth and in term drive up the overhead and degrade quality for the rest of people who choose not to jailbreak, how is it fair that we have to foot their bills?

ATT sold you, me, and everyone else an unlimited plan. If you use it 24/7 that is your right. Why are you taking up for a company who (supposedly) just figured out "OH Gee that here iphoney-thingy sure is popular.." ? They knew what they were doing. It's a come on. How FAIR is that?

Oh..the dealership called...they only charged you $30k for your Prius...they didn't know you were ACTUALLY going to drive it a lot...they want an extra $20k for using it more than 2x a week.

 

[ucfgrad93]

ATT sold you, me, and everyone else an unlimited plan. If you use it 24/7 that is your right.

Agreed. And you can keep that plan as long as you would like. You are not forced to change when you buy new equipment.

 

[Fly Rodder]

I'm actually liking this new plan. There are 2 iPhones on my family plan.

My wife in the past 6 months has not had usage greater than 135 MB.
My daughter in the past 6 months has not had usage greater than 500 MB.

By adjusting the plans accordingly, I can save $20/month or get myself an iPhone and only see an increase of $5/month as a result of the offsetting savings.

Only if your usage remains the same. Which, based on impending changes to the abilities of the iPhone, is unlikely. The phones will be bigger data hogs and AT&T are banking on people who think that their usage won't change.

 

[jimmyrules712]

Some of you guys need to chill out, sheesh.

Don't hate AT&T because you dislike their rates; you're free to use a different carrier if you're a new customer or grandfather in on the unlimited plan if you're an old customer. Hate Apple because they choose to be exclusive to AT&T (and yourself because there's only 1 phone you'd ever be happy owning).

My personal opinion about all of this?
I love the $15 plan. I know a lot of people (like my mother and sister) that REALLY want a high-quality touch screen media phone (aka iphone) but have very minimal interest in data use. This is perfect for them.

I personally would like to see the cap of the high-end plan be a bit higher...but My usage on my 3GS has never gone above 1GB so I'm not concerned (and I'm staying on my unlimited plan for now anyway)

I have no problems with caps being put in place as long as they're reasonable (the "unlimited" plan has a 5gb cap anyway). I think the caps are a good thing since the 2% of users who use 50% (or however much it is) of the bandwidth have incentive to use less (thus improving the network for the other 98% of us). I think this is merely AT&T beginning to be honest about what we're getting; we never had true unlimited internet. The only thing that you are justified in being upset about is the cap is lower now then it was before. As others have already stated: look at your useage before you freak out. For almost everyone 2GB is easily enough (and for a lot of people, though not a lot on this forum I'm guessing, 200 mb is even good enough).

All of that being said; I think being required to pay extra just for the privilege of tethering is robbery. Should we have to pay extra for the privilege of youtube and pandora and everything else a phone can do to use data? Charge us for the data and then let us do whatever we want (that's legal) with it. It's not a valid excuse to say AT&T is worried about the extra data use because that's already covered by the 2GB cap (and potential overage charges).

 

[geerlingguy]

Not a huge deal, imo... annoying, yes, but it's not the worst thing in the world. I'm just glad they're grandfathering users right now. I will probably have to get a new plan when I get the iPhone 4, but by that point, maybe we'll have a new carrier .

 

[ucfgrad93]

Only if your usage remains the same.

True, but I really don't see the new compelling feature to drive up my data usage that much.

 

[cmaier]

Because this about forcing people to buy more bandwidth than they need at a higher $/mb.

I disagree. They probably hope many people will buy the small plan, and then do their best not to go over.

They are wrong, of course.

 

[undrpsi]

Well based on AT&T's own data the lower plan is adequate for most users (65% of them).

200 texts is adequate for a lot of users. Average text rate in the U.S. is 357 per month, but that is driven way up by the 13 to 17 year old demographic who send/receive a whopping 1,742!!! Kids under 12 even use more than the average at 428/month!! Since most cell phone customers are adults I'd say there are a large portion of people out there where 200 is plenty.

I have 4 average teenagers. They average 4000 txts a month. During the summer they can hit 9000 plus. Is that scary (to a 44 year old)..oh yeah. Is it 'normal' for a teen...you betcha. I have asked and discussed this with everyone else I know who has a teen...4000 a month is not 'high'.
(NOTE: Most kids do the one line txts...and they use it as a social device...not a 'forgot milk, pick some up on way home' service like adults use.)

I don't know where your "most cell phone customers are adults" is coming from. Most families I know, everyone has cell phones. I guess, since the adult is the 'account owner' it LOOKS like adults are the only users...but I think it's about a 50/50 split (since most families have 2.5 children).

 

[mattster16]

No..we aren't talking about the car or insurance (ie phone and insurance) we are talking about the "use" charge. The "use" charge is the same if you drive 1000 miles or 10,000 miles...becuase the "use" charge is for the infrastructure. If we use your reasoning, I should get the iPhone for free (no subsidies) since I don't use a lot of data. I should also have to pay less than $3.95 per phone/month for my accident insurance...and get a discount on my rate...again...since I don't use the full data plan.

Allegory aside...if you purchase an 'unlimited' use contract and then use it as much as you can...how is that making yourself a 'posterboy' for 'screwing everyone else?" Again, ATT entered into a fair use contract, if they didn't know (unlikely) that it was going to cause problems that was an error on THEIR part...but when they, and others, demonize the customer who is using the system eactly as the contract states how is that right? If they had said..."Oops..we need to go up on anyone who is using more than 5 gigs" then fine. This BS of "Most people don't use over 2gigs so that's the where we are setting the bar" is just a justification for a rate increase because of the popularity. Mark my words...it will rub a lot of people the wrong way. It's done it to me and I don't use the max. What about all the people who were planning on the 3g iPad because of the data plan? Do you think Steve is happy after he touted the 'great' contract ATT had agreed to? I called ATT and though it's still not settled they did state the $30 unlimited that is currently available (for another few days) must be continiously used every month or it defaults to the new plan (and no way you can ever go back).

It would be different if ATT wasn't such a pain to deal with. Been with them 10 years and I have hated them from day one. Planning to move to Verizon (who ain't Saints either) anyway...this just makes my decision easier.

??? Really, the use charge is the same on your car if you drive 1,000 or 10,000 miles? You use the same amount of gas driving 1,000 miles as you do 10,000!? What kind of car do you drive!? I want one! If you drive 10,000 miles you are paying more taxes (through the purchase of fuel) which go towards infrastructure. Infrastructure is mostly funded through fuel tax. Drive more=use more fuel=pay more fuel tax. I can't even comprehend your reasoning of my reasoning to be able to respond to the whole 'getting a free phone/paying $3.95 a month' thing. I never advocated a continuous pricing model from 0 bytes to 2 gb, this is about tiers. As it stands you buy a data plan, if you don't use it all you don't get a break, but if you go over you pay more. You are buying a package deal. It's like buying a sack of potatoes. Say you get 30 but you only use 10 and the rest go bad (expire), you can't return them. Get it?

Noone is saying anyone is a bad person for using huge amounts of data on their unlimited plan. They aren't screwing everyone else in a malicious way BUT in the grand scheme of things they are using more data than everyone else and paying the same rate. I'm not demonizing anyone. AT&T is changing their model now, so that they don't offer unlimited plans. That way there is a more usage based pricing model rather than a shared cost model where everyone pays the same regardless. Those that use less pay less, those that use more pay more. Obviously those that use more won't like this. Two different philosophies. There's no magic bullet. Could more people start hitting the limits as we use more data? Yes. Hopefully at&t will be proactive in how they manage the tiers as technology advances. If they aren't though, you can be sure people will vote with their $. Verizon will move to tiered pricing as well soon. Do I think this is a good move in the long run? Not sure yet. Will it negatively impact data consumption? Not sure yet. It depends how it is managed....

Yes, it does suck about the iPad plans. I agree. I don't know how much data I'd use on an iPad since I don't own one, but I see a potential for undesirable costs there.